Q1. How would you suggest connecting with customers strictly through ecommerce? We don’t have a store front to interact and get to know our customers. We just see an order and fulfill it. How can we personalize that process?

If you’re doing ecommerce, you’ve got their email address. Write to them. A very personable newsletter sent to people who love what you sell is a great tool to get to know people. Make sure you allow them to hit reply and that you address people as personally as possible. If you sell very different products to very different people, this requires some segmenting.

Q2. If you’re company isn’t supporting your approach to monchu, how can you help them to appreciate the importance of making customers feel as though they belong?

Start with a pilot program. Show them where the revenue potential is. Companies respond to revenue. If you can help them earn money with your pilot program, you’ll be able to justify the project. Remember that business is about making money first and foremost. I think you can make more money if you help people feel like they belong.

Q3. Are there tips for maximizing hashtags?

I’m terrified of this question. #No #there #aren’t. Use hashtags as a way to search for your freaks. You don’t win anything by having the most hashtags at the end of the day.

Q4. I’m a Certified Kitchen Designer and would like to provide design services to post 9/11 wounded warriors. Not being a vet myself, I’m not a community member. How do you suggest marketing myself to that population?

You can find all kinds of people who work with that population and approach them as a friend who can then pass the service through their channel. On Instagram, for instance, I follow http://instagram.com/daveterans. I bet they know some people.

Q5. Chris – where do you stand on the line between Seth Godin’s “just ship it” and making sure your product/service/tool is perfect?

If you’re a surgeon or a commercial airline pilot, be perfect. Everyone else gets a pass.

Q6. Argh! How do I gain acceptance in a community I’d like to serve — i.e., wounded warriors — without being a member of that community?

See Answer 5.

Q7. Is there such a thing as being too freaky?

Yep. If you tread into the Justin Bieber/ Lindsey Lohan level of freaky, people won’t hire you. You’ve got to work that line of freaky-but-still-helpful. That’s what people want. If you’re the best solution for them, be as weird as you want. However, this misses the entire point of the book. If you’re the right kind of freak, you’ll know your people. They won’t flinch.

Q8. When a company’s customer base is very heterogeneous, very horizontal…what advice do you give them on how to choose which niches or tribes to focus on?

It’s never true. People say this all the time. It just means you’re either not collecting the right data to know who’s who, or you’re not looking at the data you’ve collected. Walmart knows who I am. They know what I buy versus what other people buy. You can’t get more horizontal than Walmart.

Q9. How do you evoke passion? It is even evocable, or is it more organic than anything?

Passion is. You either feel passionate about something or you don’t. I hire for passion. If I had to find 100 people to run a company for me, I’d make sure each and every one of them had nearly-tattoo-level passion for what they do. Can you “train” passion? No. Think about relationships. He or she is either into you or he or she is not. If you’re not into your job, find a better one. You don’t get a trophy for “sticking it out.”

Q10. What’s the best way to share customer passion?

Spotlight your customers as often as possible. Show their greatness. Not their praise of your dumb product. Them. Make your buyer the hero.

Q11. You mentioned podcasts as part the media for your monchu. What is the deal with podcasts lately? Everyone seems to be doing them?

Podcasts are a great way to consume information. Once people clue into them, they don’t want to stop. Think about it. You can listen while driving, while walking the dog, walk roaming the grocery store aisles. Your kid’s watching Blue’s Clues? You can listen with one earbud in.

Q12. What’s the difference between an advocate and an ambassador?

Ambassadors get the better parking spot. But seriously, forks, I think that an advocate is someone who says “I really like Greta’s Gravel Soap.” An ambassador has been given some kind of incentive to say “I’m representing Greta’s Gravel Soap.” The folks at Maker’s Mark have turned ambassadorship to an art form. They’re the go-to model for it, I’d say.